Flashmobsters

The flashmob is not new, but flashmobsters? Googling shows I’m not so brilliant as I thought — the term’s been used before online, but that won’t stop me writing about the potential criminal uses of flashmobs by organized crime, especially when they have the advantage of working in a city where everything, including law enforcement, has been privatized.

Yeah, it’s political SF, since the current administration is privatizing almost everything here, and yeah, it’s set in Seoul. Lots of young male and female twiggi — that’s a Korean word that often has a connotation rather like what people tend to mean when they talk about “miscegenation” — who have Vietnamese, Chinese, Filipino, and other heritage, and whose safest and most gainful employment opportunities are in meta-organized crime. Lots of jabs at the current administration, but also some wider social critique.

We’ll see where it goes. I’m kind of trying for 4000 words — would like to submit to Clarkesworld — but you never know, I have fragments from an abandoned novel back in the old days that would work well with this — privatized cops, quasi-reunified post-DPRK-collapse Korea, and all — so it may end up being a bigger project. Though one that shall have to wait its turn: I have other stuff to do this summer, and other projects waiting impatiently in the wings.